(mahr) she is permitted to keep and maintain as a source of personal pride and comfort." It is considered one of the great innovations of the Quran over earlier practices that women are permitted to inherit and own property. Non-Muslims have generally found great difficulty with the Quranic stipulation that a woman is allowed to inherit property but that the inheritance should be only half that of a male. "According to the Islamic understanding, however, the rationale is precisely that which applies to the verse saying that men are in charge of women." Because women are permitted to keep and maintain their own property without responsibility for taking care of their families financially, it is only reasonable that the male must spend his own earning and inheritance for the maintenance of women, should receive twice as much.In the early Islamic community, some verses of the Quran were exaggerated and their underlying ideas elaborated and defined in ways that led fairly quickly to a seclusion of women which seems quite at odds with what the Quran intended or the Prophet wanted. In early times, women participated fully with men in all activities of worship and prayer. Soon they became segregated, however, to the point where an often-quoted hadith attributed to Muhammad has him saying that "women pray better at home than in the mosque, and best of all in their own closets." Because of this, early in the development of the community women began to find the mosque, the common place of worship, less and less accessible. In general, women's participation in all activities are different than that of male participants, for example, their prayer does not necessarily follow the pattern of the regularized five times a day. Across the Islamic world one can find women spending long periods of time at shrine tombs, relaxing in a space in which none of the demands of their regular lives are put upon them. The shrine is a place in which women...
